food reviews

Buntal is a fishing village about 35 minutes drive away from
Kuching. Buntal Seafood Village is a very popular place for seafood, as
it is located right on the beach and the produce is about as fresh as
it gets – straight from the sea. Lim Hock Ann Seafood is the longest
standing and most popular one in Buntal.

There’s a lot of fresh seafood; fish, crabs, prawns, lobsters,
oysters etc. Basically, if you can get it from the sea, they have it.
Lim Hock Ann is also popular due to it’s unique seating arrangements –
they actually have a platform suspended over the sea, with waves
lapping at the bottom while you eat!

Unfortunately, it was raining yesterday, so the platform was closed.
I was surprised to find a mini entourage of people waiting for me when
I came back from Sibu. I had called a friend to pick me up but when I
exited the arrivals hall, I was accosted by my friends who came in
several cars to whisk me off to Buntal. Jesus…

Anyway, this is what the suspended platform looks like from one of
the photos in the popular Lim Hock Ann seafood center in Buntal:

This outlet has been here since forever, or so it seems. It still
retains its old skool wood structures that I remember seeing when I was
still young.

Anyway, here’s what we ordered:

Baby kailan
It’s a type of vegetable, very nice.

Butter prawns
It came out very crisp and tasted divine. The granules are caramelized butter, it’s heavenly, I tell you.

O Chien
This is oyster pancake. I like Lim Hock Ann’s implementation of this
popular must-have seafood dish. It’s moist and there are generous
amounts of oysters scattered all around the pancake instead of just a
couple in the middle.

Adem Finest Cuisine is the latest Vietnamese restaurant to hit Sibu
and I’ve heard nothing but good things about them. I went there for
lunch today to check them out.

The seating arrangements are divided into two areas – the inside
(shown above) which offers a pub like ambience and the al fresco area
outside (shown below).

I chose the latter coz it was a bright and cheery sunny day and also
because I found the water lilies they had growing in the trough lining
the al fresco area intriguing and very peaceful.

I saw that the umbrella covers were all showing Trung Nguyen Coffee,
and the waitress confirmed that it’s their specialty Vietnamese coffee
so I had that.

It came in the form of some metal contraption on top of a cup and saucer.

Noticing the befuddled look on my face, the waitress kindly
explained the system…basically, it’s a coffee filter, and you open
the lid when the water has seeped through and put it upside down on the
table.

The other two contraptions is then lifted and put on top of the said
upside down lid “to avoid the coffee from spilling” or something.

The resulting coffee was fragrant, with a nice robust aroma. It was strong and good, just the way I like it.

There’s coffee service in the form of milk, ice cubes and sugar, but I espoused that in favour of the dark, rich coffee.

It also comes with complementary garlic bread toast, and man…I
can’t describe the feeling of chewing on a bit of garlic toast and
taking a sip of hot coffee to chase it down. It’s divine!

As for the food, I ordered “Vietnamese Omelette” to start things off…

…it was just egg and sausages, nothing to write home about.

I also ordered their famous Vietnamese beef noodles, shown here in all its glory – hot, steaming pho!

The pho came with three condiments – lime, chilli sauce, and sea salt.

The pho was absolutely fabulous…it’s the understated but rich
type, with nearly clear stock, but it was well made and the natural
flavours of the ingredients fused together to provide a superlatively
wonderful meal. ;)

Hock Huat Chinese Pasty is an odd name for this establishment. They
have a couple of token pastries of Chinese origin but what the stall
really sells is chiffon cakes. It’s the flagship item.

Now, I’m not a big fan of chiffon cakes, coz I used to eat a lot of
mediocre ones when I was younger. However, I decided to try one of
these, since a cheddar cheese chiffon cake does sound rather intriguing.

The proprietor told me they specialize in two kind of chiffon cakes
– cheddar cheese and prune ones. It’s sold in halves for RM 5. That’s
half a cake, enough to fill most people, it went down just nicely for
me.

This is the owner of the place. I think he might very well be Hock
Huat, but I didn’t think to ask. Instead, I asked to go into his baking
space and take photos.

He showed me this large steel bowl which had a lot of oil (or melted
butter) and a tiny sprinkling of flour inside. There’s an automatic
beater preparing this one, which I was told is the first step.

Here’s the important second step – the one that really matters. I
know, coz he told me three times. I think it had something to do with
the indirect heating (double boiling) method. He was very enthusiastic
about stirring the chiffon cake mixture too. This one is the prune
chiffon.

I bought half of a Kraft cheddar cheese chiffon cake for RM 5. It
made me instantly discard my long simmering prejudice against chiffon
cakes. It’s delicious! The chiffon cake is very soft, with a
melt-in-your-mouth texture. The cheese flavors came through just
nicely. I was amazed at how soft the chiffon cake is, it practically
disintegrated when I put it into my mouth. Highly recommended!

This is Hot Pot Herbs & Spices Mutton Soup, the newly opened
outlet which caught my attention when I went past during lunch hour.
It’s located in front of Ang Cheng Ho and the signage can be easily
seen while driving down Jalan Padungan. I decided to drop by and sample
their mutton soup just because I liked the sign board so much.

This is the very vivid mascot (of sorts) of the place. It’s a
harmless little sheep in a bathtub. The imagery couldn’t be more
gruesome – the sheep is not enjoying a luxurious hot bath, as its
shower cap would lead you to believe…it’s being boiled alive! You
killed it when you ordered your soup! Yes kids, mutton comes from
sheep, not your local butcher. ;)

The counter of this eating establishment is adorned with sample
dishes from their menu offerings. I opted for their specialty – the
Herbs & Spices Mutton Soup at RM 8. I must also mention that this
establishment gets two thumbs up for being photographer friendly. The
proprietor (photo above) jokingly asked for a copy of the prints since
she noticed me taking photos of everything. :)

Back to the ambience, the place was full of the typical crowd of 9-5
workers (except I’m 8 am – 5 pm), it’s common for newly established
outlets to be packed with people wanting to try the latest and
greatest. The seating arrangements consist of mostly 6 person glass
tables, and they were thoughtful enough to leave a Kimberly-Clark
tissue dispenser and a glass ashtray on every table. You won’t be
seeing any unsightly metal flimsy ashtrays or tissue boxes over here.

It’s worthy to note that they do not serve conventional drinks, only
“natural drinks” which includes things like red bean drink, green bean
drink, barley drink and the like. I opted for the barley. The food
turnaround was very slow, but that’s because they cook every single pot
individually as can be seen in the open kitchen. I estimate it took
about 30 minutes for mine to arrive.

The soup can only be described with a single word – divine! It is
spicy and hot and very substantial. This isn’t watered down
broth…it’s (very) hearty soup! I can only imagine about what goes
into the hot pot but I could detect a plethora of different spice
notes, and all of them good. The mutton was generous, there’s much more
mutton than can be seen from the photo, the dish is well worth the RM 8
and it comes with rice. There is a variety of different cuts in the
pot, so if there’s one you particularly favor, it’s likely to be in
there.

There is this wonderful Japanese Pizza available at either I-Chi-Ban
Teppanyaki or Economy Tepanyaki (depending on which sign you look at)
at Tabuan Jaya. I had this last night as well, and this eating
establishment scene preceded the teh c peng post chronologically.

This is the proprietor preparing my Japanese Pizza. Watch him shape the pizza into, er…a pizza.

Now this, my friends, is the Japanese Pizza. It looks and tastes
wonderful. Those brown flaky things on top are cuttlefish! There is a
layer of pork floss between the topping and the pancake. Lovely! The
sauce is a mayonnaise – Thousand Island fusion topping, which goes
really well with the ingredients. There are some brown onion skins
which adds to the taste too.

Here’s a closer look at the pancake. This is the interior, which
shows raw onions, meat and some other stuff. It’s not authentic
Japanese cruisine, obviously, but this goes for RM 4, and the portion
is generous, which is a great bargain!

Ah Boon had a plate of chicken chop and this Taiwan sausage (shown
above) which I had as well. Ah Ann had some rice with beef and onions
and Miriam had the Japanese Pizza as well.

I will rewind the events of last night to the last post (which is
chronologically the second post after the initial post) in this series
which lead to me throwing up in the middle of the night in a dirty
longkang in Tabuan Jaya.

Chinese Barbecue Specialist. It’s a big name to live up to. This
outlet is located at the end of Jalan Padungan and it’s quite famous
for it’s barbecue offerings. I went there for lunch today. This is what
the stall looks like:

Apparently, the “e” has fallen off the sign, showing “Chin Se
Barbecue Specialist”, which puzzled me for a while since the shop sign
is Chinese Barbecue Specialist. This is the flagship of the coffee
shop, don’t go asking for steamed chicken or anything like that – this
outlet offers BBQ meat only.

As you can see, there are several BBQ stuff on offer. You can order
BBQ chicken rice, but to fully appreciate the wonders of barbecue meat,
you have to try the “mixed plate”. There are other BBQ staples like
char siew rice, pork ribs rice, etc. Basically just about anything you
see in the picture above is available in whatever combination you can
think of.

Here’s a closer look at the plate. There’s barbecue chicken (the
white stuff), crispy pork (the brown crispy stuff) and char siew (pork
cuts of an unknown origin). This is all lying on a bed of chicken rice.
It tastes really good, despite the simple appearance.

These are the two sauces – the BBQ sauce and the chilli sauce. You
want the barbecue sauce (the brown one). This is the secret to a good
BBQ meat meal…the sauce makes the dish (or something). Just liberally
apply the barbecue sauce and you’ll definately enjoy your meal. I like
this place, there’s a homely sort of feel to it, and they serve good
barbecue meat. Do they deserve the “specialist” title? Personally, I
think they do. :)

Boxing chicken rice! Doesn’t that sound intriguing? The name of the
dish is the best selling point of this rather mundane (but tasty)
preparation. I was searching for food just now (I’m typing this at
home, so it would be “last night” by the time you read this) and walked
past the Singapore Chicken Rice (scr) stall which seems to have
expanded their menu to include the chicken rice variants like salad
chicken rice etc. I was interested in boxing chicken rice though.

My apologies about the foliage that obscured the right side of the
first picture. I couldn’t very well move it, look at the size of the
shrubbery and pot. Photographing the outlet from the other side would
miss the main menu wall which has boxing chicken rice (watch the virus
infected chicken box each other!) photo on it.

This is the photo of the menu banner which depicts the Boxing
Chicken Rice dish. It appears to be dubbed boxing chicken rice due to
the double chicken drumsticks…I imagine some marketing person thought
that looks like the chicken are having fist fights or something to that
effect.

This is the Real Life (TM) photo of the dish. It doesn’t differ all
that much from the menu picture which is a pleasant surprise. The
drumsticks are the small ones from the wing of the chicken. It tastes
like Ayamas mini drumsticks without the Ayamas flavor. The boxing
chicken rice had a great sweet and sour sauce permeating the dish, this
imparts a nice taste everything. There is also a nicely done sunny side
up egg and some veggies. The rice is chicken rice eg real chicken rice.
I liked it, it’s a nice change from the normal chicken rice Singapore
Chicken Rice offers.

On another topic, does anyone know any er…”duty free” liquor
outlets in Kuching? I used to know one in 3rd mile – fly by night
operation, closed down the same year it opened (when I was in Inti). In
case anyone is wondering what “duty free” liquor outlets are, they’re
the ones that buys in bulk from duty free Federal Territories like
Labuan (usually) and Langkawi (unlikely due to distance) and sells them
at a reduced price (RM 40 – 60 each 750 ml bottle), undercutting
legitimate bottle shops price wise. I didn’t have any problems in KL –
Svenskt Brannvin vodka @ RM 30 (40% 700 ml bottle) in the Swedish
Specialty Shop at your friendly local Ikea outlet. ;) Thanks for the
tip, Stephanie! I brought several bottles of that and O.P.
Anderson Fine Old Aquavit (another bargain buy @ RM 22.90 for 500 ml,
40% vol) over but er…inventory levels have dropped below the
personally preset threshold level so a re-stock is necessary to
maintain consistant amounts.

If my math is right, I need at least 1/4 bottle with benzos to sleep
each night, since I drank about 1 1/4 bottles since I arrived (not
including other alcohol containing beverages). Anyone who has a problem
with this can send mail to devnull@sixthseal.com which would naturally
be routed to /dev/null. I go to work on time, I do my work well since
I’ve had a good night’s sleep (I don’t get hangovers, since I hydrate
myself before sleeping), and so what I do at night (which is legal btw)
is my own business. Anyway, any kang tau about duty free in Kuching,
please email to veritas@castitas.com
instead of commenting here okay? Thanks! By the way, I told the truth
about the email addresses – there really is no veritas@castitas.com or
a veritas@sixthseal.com, they all go to the me@castitas.com and
me@sixthseal.com catch all address. So there. :p

P/S – Before the harm reduction police (HRP) jump on me, let me
state that some people think that benzodiazepines combined with another
CNS depressant like alcohol will instantly put you six feet under.
Please do not mock them, for they’re looking out for you, and indeed,
this combination has caused fatalities in the past, but er…it’s not
as dangerous as the HRP makes it sound. But you did not see that last
sentence! I repeat, you did not see that last sentence. Please don’t
drink and take benzodiazepines at the same time. Thank you very much,
I’ve done my civic duty.

P/P/S – I have to tone down the sarcasm, it seems to dominating my posts lately, forgive me. :)

P/P/P/S – The conglomeration of veritas and killuminati into a
single entity may have caused unexpected perceived changes in
personality. My apologies, now that I’ve admitted everything, I have no
obligation to stick to the “personalities” that I’ve created. I’m being
the real me now, a bit of an asshole at times, quite a lot of “drug
elitism”, sometimes sarcastic, but generally I like to think I’m a nice
guy, so I hope that you can forgive any transgressions and adapt and
perhaps get to like me as me. :)